By Francesca Forzani and Nicole Garcia
When TeachingWorks first published its list of high-leverage practices in 2012, classrooms looked different in some important ways. Teachers had different instructional resources available to them; in fact, many were creating their own resources from scratch or with the assistance of a Google search. Open-source materials were not common. Digital tools played a much smaller role in everyday teaching. And no one was anticipating the rapid emergence of generative AI.
So, when we revisited our list of high-leverage practices this year, we expected to make some changes. And we did. We made several practices more explicit, refined the way we describe others, and updated the list to reflect important changes in teachers’ work, including the growing use of high-quality instructional materials and AI-enabled tools.
But perhaps the most striking thing we found was how much didn’t need to change.
Fourteen years after we first published the list, the core work of classroom teaching remains remarkably consistent. Teachers and students are still coming together around worthwhile content. Students still need opportunities to make sense of ideas, practice new ways of thinking and doing, and learn from one another. And teachers still need to notice what students are thinking and doing, interpret what they see and hear, and use that information to make decisions about what to do next.
In other words, teaching and learning are still constituted by the productive exchanges among teachers, students, and content that take place in classrooms.
That may sound obvious, but it is worth emphasizing at a time when so much attention is focused on new technologies and new ways of delivering instruction. Digital tools can do remarkable things. High-quality instructional materials can provide teachers with powerful resources for planning and instruction. AI-enabled tools may help teachers analyze student work, generate instructional supports, or adapt materials. We expect these resources to continue to support the work of teaching.
But they do not eliminate the need for teachers who know how to use them well.
A tool can help a teacher identify patterns in student work, for example, but the teacher still has to determine whether those patterns are meaningful and what they imply for instruction. An instructional material can offer a carefully designed sequence of questions and tasks, but the teacher still has to understand what students are thinking and decide how to respond to their ideas. An AI chatbot can generate an explanation, but a teacher still needs to know whether the explanation is accurate, useful, accessible to these particular students, and appropriate for the moment.
And no technology can substitute for the human relationships and interactions at the heart of building a classroom learning environment.
The experience of the pandemic made this especially visible. When schools moved abruptly to remote instruction, educators found extraordinary ways to continue teaching and connecting with students. Digital technologies allowed forms of interaction that otherwise would not have been possible. At the same time, the experience underscored how much students and teachers gain from being together: seeing one another, responding in real time, building relationships, listening to one another’s ideas, and working together on challenging content.
This is why so many of the practices on the new TeachingWorks list will look familiar. Leading a group discussion. Eliciting, interpreting, and responding to student thinking. Explaining and modeling content. Setting up and managing small group work. Building respectful relationships. Providing feedback to students. These are not practices tied to a particular technology or instructional program. They describe fundamental aspects of the work teachers do with students. They may be supported by technology, but they cannot be replaced with technology.
The new list therefore reflects both change and continuity. We have updated the practices where our learning and changes in the instructional landscape called for it. But we have also reaffirmed something fundamental: there is no substitute for a teacher who knows how to facilitate meaningful interactions among students, teachers, and content.
The tools available to teachers will continue to evolve. The work of teaching will continue to evolve with them. But the central task remains—to create the conditions in which students can think, participate, learn, and flourish together.
That is what our high-leverage practices are designed to help teachers learn to do.